Why would he need a mortgage? How rich was George by the late 1970’s?
Not very by celebrity standards. What the Taxman left of the Beatles fortune was squandered by mismanagement at Apple or tied up for a decade in legal battles between the former members.
Should five percent appears too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
'Cause I’m the Taxman
In the 60’s somewhere into the 70’s (as even Graham Chapman was avoiding this tax while making the cruddy UFO sequence in London (and had one day) as “Life of Brian” was made in Iberia for the most part) “rich” people were taxed as high as 95%.
Part of the reasons The Beatles broke up was “what lawyer and guy making record deals and accounting guy” do we use.
George was extremely generous with his money. Period. That he helped fund (and the fact that he was at least partly doing so helped a great deal with getting to 100%) some really good movies is the kind of guy he was.
Hence “One for you nineteen for me.”
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet
Beat that Paul!
Well, 5% of 100 000 000 (or whatever) is still 5 000 000. Not too shabby.
Remember we’re talking about marginal tax rates. If you’re paying 95% of £100,000,000 then that £100,000,000 is the part of your income in the highest tax bracket and you’re paying lower rates on all income under the cutoff for the highest bracket. And that’s after you take all your rich-guy deductions.
George gave a lot to the Taxman but he kept a lot more than %5. He was living pretty comfortably.
In an interview, Eric Idle said that after Holy Grail was out and a reporter asked what was their next film going to be called he just threw off the name “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory” as a joke.
I substituted [Sound of arrow striking servant]“Message for you, Sir” for AOL’s “You’ve got mail”.
Niiiice.
My lovely wife and I just re-read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. Lovely wife: Now I understand Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
Castle Anthrax, the murderous Lancelot at Swamp Castle, and many other parts of White’s retelling are poked at by the Pythons.
My coworkers made me change it away from that after the day that I got 50 emails.
“The people in charge of approving e-mail notifications have been sacked.”
Concord.
It’s hard to imagine today, but back then, I’m pretty sure that the main reason it was funny was just in the shock value of saying the words out loud. Especially in America, absolutely nobody had ever said either “oral sex” or “spanking” in a movie..
(Even 15 years later, Madonna put out a song about spanking, and it created surprise and controversy). Times change.
And then they gave it a go and realized that Jesus isn’t actually that funny, not being subject to most of the foibles of mere mortals upon which much of comedy is based. But his followers, well…
“‘Blessed are the cheesemakers’?”
“Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”
Whatta you got against cheesemakers?
Quiet, Big Nose.